GROUP 5

THEORIES IN
LANGUAGE AND
CULTURE
ENERGIZER
 objectives

At the end of this topic, the students

should be able to

A. identify the different theories of

anthropological linguists

B. differentiate linguistic determinism

from linguistic relativity, and

C. relate the different theories to

society and language learning
 Sapir-whorf
hypothesis theory
• The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis is a widely used label for the linguistic
relativity hypothesis, that is, the proposal that the particular
language we speak shapes the way we think about the world. The
label derives from the names of American anthropological linguists
Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf, who persuasively argued for
this idea during the 1930s and 1940s – although they never actually
characterized their ideas as an ’hypothesis’. In contrast to earlier
European scholarship concerned with linguistic relativity, their
approach was distinguished by first-hand experience with native
American languages and rejection of claims for the superiority of
European languages.
 2 SUB
CATEGORIES
OF SAPIR
WHORF
HYPOTHESIS
linguistic relativity
• It sometimes called the
Whorfian hypothesis, posits that
properties of language affect
the structure and content of
• The linguistic relativity hypothesis, thought and thus the way
the proposal that the particular humans perceive reality.
language we speak influences the
way we think about reality, forms
one part of the broader question
of how language influences
thought.
 • Linguistic determinism is the concept
that language and its structures limit
and determine human knowledge or
thought, as well as thought processes
such as categorization, memory, and
perception.
Example: One common example of
linguistic determinism is the idea that
linguistic the Inuit have a much more
sophisticated understanding of snow
determinism than people from other cultures do
because Inuktitut has many different
words for snow.

 Criticisms of Sapir-
Whorf Hypothesis

There have been many criticisms of this hypothesis.

They include:
• The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis is often criticized for being too broad.

• It can be difficult to distinguish between a language's grammar and its culture

• It may not always be useful in all situation.

• It is difficult to study the effects of language on thought and behavior.

•
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis suggests that people who speak different languages
think differently.
II. ethnophoetics
theory
 ETHNOPhoetics
THEORY

• is a method of recording text versions of oral poetry or narrative

performances (i.e. verbal lore) that uses poetic lines, verses, and
stanzas (instead of prose paragraphs) to capture the formal, poetic
performance elements which would otherwise be lost in the written
texts.
• The development of ethnopoetics as a separate subfield of study was
largely pioneered from the middle of the 20th century by
anthropologists and linguists such as Dennis Tedlock and Dell Hymes.
 Philosophy
• No two languages are the
same, the worlds in which
different society live are
distinct worlds, and the
analysis of certain
literature texts from a
certain culture will highlight
its distinctiveness.
methodology
• Text that were taken down in the era
of handwritten dictation and published
as prose are reformatted and
retranslated in order reveal their
poetic features as defined by such
formal devices as syntactic structures
and parallelism.
• transcripts and translations swerve
not only as listening guides but as
scores for new performances for
sound recording.

III. oral gestures

theory by piaget
Oral-Gesture Theory by
Richard Piaget

Reveals the origins of language

as it suggests that the evolution
of sounds involves a connection
between physical gestures and
orally produced sounds.

examples:

NO SIGN MONEY SIGN OKAY SIGN POUTING

 ORAL GESTURE
THEORY EXAMPLE:
example it is done particularly
involving tongue, lips and
mouth, used patterns that
were similar to physical
gestures such as waving. So
instead of saying „Goodbye“
by waving a hand it is
proposed that early humans
started waving their tongues.
 • the theory of an oral gesture
source may be reasonable to
some extent but it does not
CRITICISM expose the origins of language
completely.
OF ORAL

GESTURES example:
My car is broken so I took my
wife’s car to get to work.

THANk you for

listening!🫶🏻
 LEADER: ABUQUE, AVRIL PHOEBE
ASSISTANT LEADER: ABINES, JEMALYN R.
MEMBERS:
RESPICIO, JOSEFINA F.
FELIPE, HAZEL
FAMILGAN, MIKAELA JEYN
MALANA, KEIN
PEÑAFLORIDA, ZYRA MARIZ
PRADEZ, MARK EDWIN